The Downfalls of Looking Back
by RagingContent
Summary: (Admin Chickens/Haunted!) We've all felt pain. We're all still in pain, though one more than the others. We're still moving on, so we can defeat Him once and for all, but every now and then we can't help but look back.


**So! After nearly a month of writer's block, I have made this masterpiece :3**

**This is from The Haunted, which is a Minecraft movie series by RejectedShotgun. GO WATCH ALL OF IT BEFORE READING THIS OR YOU WILL BE VERY, VERY CONFUSED!**

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><p>Sometimes he remembered when he met his friend. It seemed so long ago, since he had lost track of time… Years, many years. Seven? Ten?<p>

Drake didn't know. But the one thing he did know, was that his best friend was gone. Gone like dew in the morning sunlight, like hope on a doomed quest.

_Why did you do it, Armen? Why did you have to sacrifice yourself for us?_

Drake hated to remember. But sometimes he had to, to remind himself what he was trying to rescue.

"_Screw it, I've had enough of this!"_

_The figure in the white armor charged, toward the white-eyed demon floating in the air. You could hear the desperation in his voice; he had obviously been tormented by Herobrine for longer than he'd have wanted to be._

_But then again, so had Drake._

Drake hated the pain of remembering him. But how can you not remember your best friend?

"_Armen, no!"_

_Drake ran forward, trying to save his friend, but Herobrine and Armen had both fallen off the ledge, straight into the lava below._

_As their Grayson walked up beside Drake, the half-enderman whispered, "He's gone…"_

He was gone. But not into death, as we had thought.

After that, Drake had left Grayson and wandered out of Ironport, into the wilderness beyond. He didn't think about going back. All he did was wander through the wilderness, trying to find a place for himself. But one question echoed through his mind.

Armen wasn't lost in death, he was lost in blood and shadow.

_Why couldn't it have been me?_

Drake could still remember when he had first learned that Armen was still alive.

"_You haven't heard?" The other traveler said, flicking her brown hair over her shoulder._

"_Heard what?"_

"_Apparently, there's this… _Thing, _that destroyed the village of Spruce Grove last week! The whole village was burned!"_

_That caught Drake's attention. "The whole village burned?"_

"_Yeah! Only one person got away, but they saw it. It had one glowing white eye."_

"_Glowing white eyes… But only one?" _Not Herobrine…

_Drake's eyes widened. "Or maybe, not all of him."_

Snapping out of Memoryland, Drake turned his head, glancing outside the window frames beside him. The windows had obviously been broken when Herobrine had attacked this old village, but Drake knew there had been glass there before. And maybe, if he'd had enough energy, he could have tried to repair the windows using magic.

Ah, magic. Such a useful thing, would you think?

Through the last four years, Drake had often wondered what would have happened if he'd known magic from the very beginning. If he'd known magic before Herobrine had started haunting them, would they have been able to stay safe, in their old house?

But unfortunately, he hadn't known magic yet. So he'd gone through all the trouble and pain of being tormented by Herobrine.

_Magic can't be useful if you don't know how to use it._

The half-enderman sat down on the window ledge, brushing away some glass shards. His feet hung over the edge, over the void of the cliff, but Drake didn't look down.

He looked at the sky, watching the moon trace its orbit across the sky. The stars seemed so distant and far away…

Like Armen's soul, lost in his struggle against Herobrine.

Drake still couldn't help but blame himself for it all.

_If I'd never met Armen, or bought the old house with him, or gone after Herobrine… Would none of this have ever happened? Or would Herobrine have stalked us anyways, knowing that we would do something to try to stop Him in the future?_

Unfortunately, Drake would never know.

"Armen, I know you can't hear me or anything, but… This is something I just have to say." Drake whispered.

"I'm sorry about everything. About having Herobrine follow me to you, about dragging you along to try and find Him. But what's hurting me the most… Is that you sacrificed yourself for me, knowing you would die, but you ended up much worse than dead.

"I'm sorry… For everything."

Drake got up, and turned back into the guardhouse where he and Grayson were staying for the night. But if he hadn't, would he have heard the strained whisper that was trying to reach him?

_"I should be saying that, Drake. It's not your fault, it never was... It was mine."_

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><p>Sometimes, Armen could hear what was outside, or even see hazy images. But most of the times, he was lost in darkness, trying to gather enough strength to fight Herobrine's consciousness.<p>

It seems like years since He merged with Armen, and maybe it had been. It could have been hundreds of years or two weeks, but Armen would never know. All he could do was fight the monster, alone in the darkness.

_At least I've kept Drake safe._

Armen could often tell what He was thinking about, and what He would do next. So, after Drake had taken part of His strength away from Armen's body, Armen could tell that He would be aiming for Drake next. As one last sacrifice for his friend, Armen had been distracting Herobrine away from him.

_Am I all that's keeping Drake safe right now? Because apparently, my brother hates him a lot._

Even when Armen could see through the darkness, it wasn't very inspiring. Most often, Herobrine would be in the middle of destroying a village, and all Armen would be able to see would be the pain and fear in the villagers' eyes as Herobrine struck them down. He would hear their screams, and he would try to fight Him. But of course, he never could; Herobrine would just shove Armen's willpower to the side, and continue the destruction.

Armen's struggles would make them both weak; but Herobrine always recovered his strength quicker than Armen would, and he would be back in control before Armen would even think of it.

Once, Armen had taken control. But he had been too late; the ruins of a destroyed village would already be crumbling around him, and the fires had only just been burning out as the sun was reaching the eastern horizon.

_Why do you do this, Collin? _Armen asked Herobrine through their telepathic link. _Why every single night?_

**What gives you the right to ask me?**

_Damn it, you monster! You take over my body and wipe out countless lives, but you can't answer a simple question?_

For a few moments, Herobrine remained silent, but Armen could tell that he was trying to find a convincing lie.

**To break you.**

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><p>Grayson was lying on the floor, across from Drake, watching his friend grieve.<p>

Even after four years, he could never stand the bloodshed of this world, so when Grayson found Drake, he thought he could be happy and lead a somewhat normal life. But when Drake proposed a quest to help free Armen, there was no possible way that Grayson could have refused without sounding self-centered. And why would he have wanted to refuse…

_I'm tired of all the bloodshed._

How true those words had been-they had summarized everything Grayson had been through in the past four years. And even before that; back at the oil rig, Grayson had been forced to have all of his coworkers and friends disappear one by one. The loneliness had been a burden then, but a blessing now.

The silence was free of fighting, and Grayson was glad for that. But the silence only brought back painful memories.

Like the last day.

_The door swung open, and a dark figure stepped inside, shaking the heavy snow off of his helmet. Obviously, it was cold outside. In the arctic, even a full day of the weak sunlight was a rarity, and it wasn't one that they'd found anytime recently._

"_Hey, Grayson!"_

_Grayson took off his helmet and glanced toward where the shout had come from. Another man was walking into the small entry room, rubbing his bare arms to keep them warm._

"_Come on, Grayson, close the door! We don't want _inside_ to be frozen like a popsicle too, do we? Especially since we can just go and do that outside?"_

_The blond laughed and elbowed the door shut._

_The other man smiled and readjusted the penguin hat on his head. "Well, anyway, do you know where Collin is? He said he was going to go help you out there, and he hasn't come back yet."_

_Grayson frowned. "I didn't see him there… But then again, I was inspecting the oil pipes for the past half-hour or so, so he could have gone to the oil drill after I left._

"_Why are you worrying, Luke? I bet he's just taking his time with the work, like always."_

_Luke still looked a bit worried, so Grayson laughed shakily. "Come on, let's get out of the cold room so we can, I don't know, _not _turn into popsicles like you said?"_

_Luke laughed. "Come on, then, slowpoke!"_

Collin had never come back, and Luke had disappeared the very next day.

Grayson had been alone at the base for three years before Armen and Drake had appeared, and he had waited another year after he passed through the portal to this place before the two had appeared again. The four years of loneliness after Armen had sacrificed himself had been even harsher.

And now, he was here with Drake, watching his best friend be sorry for himself. He couldn't even tell what was worse; the silence or Drake's sadness.

But that was when he heard the whisper:

"_It's not your fault, it never was… It was always mine."_

Drake curled up on the patch of floor where he had chosen to sleep, so he hadn't heard the ominous whisper. The half-enderman fell asleep a few moments later, but Grayson could tell that he himself was far from sleeping.

Heh, sleep was the one thing he needed but the last thing he was going to get.

Grayson was still awake even when the moon reached the western horizon and the sun started to rise. With a resigned sigh, he rolled onto his other side to face away from the window, and he tried to quiet his mind to fall asleep. It wasn't easy, but it's no different from our quest.

Our quest… End this nightmare, once and for all.

And Grayson fell into a restless sleep.

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><p><strong>I have a riddle for you.<strong>

_Wait, why are you talking to me? I thought that you were some mindless psychopathic killing machine who only saw me as an obstacle?_

**Well, that's true. I just thought you might be getting bored. Apparently, you don't like all this killing, and I don't see why.**

_Yeah, I wonder why not._

**Your sarcasm doesn't fool me.**

_It was never meant to. Just tell me the stupid riddle already._

**Impatient much, but… Whatever. Here it is. **_**There is a thing in which nothing is, yet it has a name.**__**It is sometimes quiet, but sometimes it is deadly.**__**It laughs when you fail, and it plays mind games.**_

_Well, it sounds a lot like you._

**You're more intelligent than I thought. Well done, puny mortal.**

_Yay, I did good. _Can I have my body back now?

**But not clever enough.**

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><p>Drake woke up in the middle of the night, shivering from the cold. It looked like it would be close to dawn, but the mage didn't know whether a new day was a blessing or a curse anymore.<p>

When life starts looking like a burden, you're obviously in trouble, right?

ButDrake wasn't giving up yet, and that was the point. He would make it through each day until he could free Armen from Herobrine's power. Armen was his childhood friend, and he would stop at nothing until they could be together _without_ Herobrine's evil spirit inside them.

Drake blinked sleepily again. _But obviously… That will only come after I get some more sleep._

So he fell asleep again, to a nightmare.

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><p><em>The three of us have come so far through Herobrine's tortures. Even though one of our number is possessed by our enemy, and the other has a scrap of His power inside him, all of our quests are the same. We have to defeat Herobrine.<em>

_Can we fight to save our souls?_

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><p><strong>I hope you all enjoyed 3<strong>

**-RC/Kittybrine**


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